I'm Not A Sour-Puss

On this week's show I was surprised at how pissed off I seemed. "The schmatte was margarine colored --blech!" "The party was forgettable -- Yuck!" "The flowers were wrong -- How could you????" I reminded myself of Mommie Dearest having a cruelty orgasm when she takes away Christina's dolls. What was up my butt? Nothing much actually. My joie de vivre was in full effect, swear to God, but those naughty editors decided to crank up the mean factor this week. They were just doing their job and I thought it was a great episode.

Contrary to the impression I gave, I wasn't disappointed with the party spaces at all. I was actually impressed with what those crazy kids concocted.

The winning design, perpetrated by the lovely and talented Michael, Carisa, and Matt, was pretty FABOO. The overall feeling was very confident and cohesive -- strong proportions, clean, simple. The dj and dance floor in the middle created a sense of energy, and oversized chunkster Doc Holiday injected a major je ne sais quoi.

Design is all about constraints -- budget, time, space, function -- and good designers know exactly what they can and cannot achieve within those constraints. Michael, Carisa and Matt were really smart about the whole assignment.

They understood how much they could accomplish in the time they had and they kept it simple and punchy. Ambition is what killed Andrea, Goil, and Eric. They had lots of lofty ideas like chandeliers, entrance walls, parties in Iceland (!), but those ideas never came together as a cohesive whole. The kids put all their focus on those disparate elements and never stepped back and thought about the overall design.

I was shocked by their behind the scenes hissy-fits and mishegas! Andrea, Goil, and Eric are all incredibly sweet and talented people, but, one of them had to step forward and be a big butch daddy top and take control!

Instead, there was lots of miscommunication and dysfunction and it showed in the design. Thrilled to see Goil reference Dorothy Draper. One of my ongoing concerns about Goil as a designer was his lack of connoisseurship. He was majorly creative and he always surprised me with his ideas, but he never discussed his work within the context of the history of design. So, I'm glad he referenced La Draper and, for me, that really saved him this week.

I wasn't totally clear about Andrea's contribution in this challenge. She arranged those flowers and that was definitely not good. And, she didn't do a great job on the chandeliers. She could easily have been later'd. But, Andrea was spared because of Erik's wall at the front of the space. That wall was not good, but the worst thing was this weird yellow bench/beam thing that was in front of the bar.

It was never shown on camera so in the episode it's not clear why we bid Erik a fond farewell. Sometimes in group challenges the decision can seem a bit arbitrary, but, in this case, Erik was the one who had to go.

Erik -- Love him, love him, love him! Latering Erik felt like the opposite of a cruelty orgasm. I was very sad.

But, Erik will be really successful in life and business because he's a sweet guy and he has a good attitude and buckets of savoir faire. The memory of his piratey kid's room lives on! Erik -- Keep on zsooshing.